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Sunday, October 01, 2006

I chanced upon a rather dramatic scene in the news yesterday, the collapse of an overpass in Laval, Quebec. The worst part is large chunks of concrete had fallen from the overpass an hour prior to the collapse; still, the highway remained open.

The story reminds me of the ill-fated Hoan Bridge in Milwaukee (immortalized in The Blues Brothers). That bridge suffered a failure little more than a year after it became linked to the Lake Parkway. While it didn't collapse, several support beams cracked, and the road sagged. Fortunately, no one was hurt, the bridge was immediately closed, and the damaged bridge sections were successfully demolished and replaced. In the interim, though, the local news media devoted an inordinate amount of resources to filming the bridge, needing to be there 24/7 in case it collapsed.

A collection of news stories can be found in the archives of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The company that analyzed the failure has a report here.